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THE HERITAGE OF TECHNOLOGY AS A PARTICLE OF CULTURE Part I. Within the Sustainable Development Current

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Abstract

The protection of cultural heritage in the twenty first century is determined by a number of factors (de-industrialisation, progress in information and communication technology, insufficiencies of cultural education, virtualisation of reality and experiences, assumption of many state tasks by selfgovernments, and limited state funds for the conservation of historical monuments). All these processes are more or less concurrent with the principles of sustainable development, proclaimed in 1987, referred to in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland in 1997 and defined in the Statute of 27 April 2001 on the protection of the natural environment. This idea is also taken into account by many international documents enacted in the past twenty years by UNESCO, the Council of Europe, ICOMOS and TICCIH. The key problem consists of a reference of the principles of sustainable development to culture and, in particular, to the protection of cultural heritage resources. A new approach is required by the analysis applied both in relation to non-material phenomena and assorted artefacts. Conservation calls for new methods of valorisation, sufficiently universal to encompass all cultural goods and suitably simple and detailed to be applied in daily research-scientific praxis. Upon the basis of an analysis of international documents and foreign publications the article proposes a methodical valorisation of historical objects, founded on a canon of 12 identified values comprising, respectively, a collection of cultural values relating to the past of a given heritage resource (social identity, authenticity, integrity, uniqueness, historical value and artistic value) as well as a collection of socio-economic values expressing contemporary reality and anticipating the needs of the future generations (social usefulness, functional sustainability, economical value, educational value, aesthetic value and political value). The method should be universal, and the process of rendering precise the analysis arguments and the assessment criteria should depend on the type of resource, i.e. whether it is material or non-material, movable or non-movable, a single monument or a complex, a historical site or a cultural landscape. True, a work of art, monumental architecture and a monument of technology differ, but the names of their potential values should remain identical, expressing the holistic paradigm of culture. Such an interpretation takes into account the strategic target of contemporary conservation-restoration as well as all sorts of revitalizations (regeneration, rehabilitation) of the historical substance, which should invariably comprise a balanced retention of all the values of assorted cultural heritage resources for the future generations, This is a dynamic and complicated social process, taking place in changing economic and political conditions, which frequently involves parties pursuing equally different goals. The protection of historical monuments calls for lively negotiations for the sake of their survival, processes that should be consistently accompanied by a vision of the present-day and future beneficiaries of the values in question.

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Financed by the National Centre for Research and Development under grant No. SP/I/1/77065/10 by the strategic scientific research and experimental development program:
SYNAT - “Interdisciplinary System for Interactive Scientific and Scientific-Technical Information”.